Makaryûdo Demon-Hunter (1989)

... aka: 魔狩人

... aka: Demon Hunter

... aka: Demon Hunter Makaryûdo

... aka: Demon Hunter Makaryuudo

... aka: Makaryûdo

Directed by:

Yukio Okamoto

350 years ago, Yama Rikudo was banished to some kind of underworld limbo for all eternity by a master demon for using a "mirror of the past" to look into the past lives of others. Now boss demon is ready to forgive and forget, granted Yama goes along with his master plan to restore some sense of balance to the failing human world. On Earth, excess, a power imbalance, war, pollution and an overall "foulness of the spirit" has increased the amount of negative energy and thus opened the doors for all kinds of creatures to run amok. The demon wants Yama to return to Earth and gives her the sole task hunting down and killing these creatures and thus restoring some much-needed harmony to the universe. Seeing how the reincarnated form of her former lover - a student named Sho Kurogane - is around, she agrees. To help her in her quest, she's given a nifty red scythe weapon and a familiar that rests on her shoulder and can sometimes transform into a giant dragon.

With her unruly hair amusingly styled into devil horns, Yama poses as a teenage student and starts attending a school plagued with strange disappearances. The principal is away for an extended period and his beautiful (supposed) granddaughter is filling in for him. The granddaughter is actually a monster in disguise who's been regularly luring (namely male and horny) students to their doom. At her bidding are an army of winged female monsters (human heads and nude torsos on bird bodies with fangs and talons) as well as some weird creature that's some kind of tentacled snail with a snake-like neck, human head and eyes for ears. The victims are lured into a building with a trap door on the floor that leads to some underground catacombs where some of these monsters lurk.

While a lot of potentially enjoyable horror anime elements are present and accounted for, this is horribly written and paced, very confusing and so severely underdeveloped in so many different ways that it's difficult to really enjoy. Everything feels rushed and half-baked, starting with the fact that I could never figure out why the underworld demons were even bothering sending Yama to kill demons in the first place when later in the very same conversation they're talking about needing to destroy humanity (?) Maybe this is similar to the Christian belief that Israel needs to be protected so that it can then be destroyed per Revelation so they get their "Second Coming," but I couldn't really tell where this was going.

A lot of side characters are introduced, including Sho's innocent, wide-eyed kid sister and his spastic comic relief best friend, a bratty, hair-pulling little boy, a couple of diner waitresses and others, and none of them really have any relevance to the plot nor anything of interest to do and just eat up what little time there is. I'm sure there were plans to stretch this into some kind of series and elaborate on the characters and plot points later on, but since that never happened and we have nothing around to retroactively remedy the myriad problems seen here, this doesn't work at all as a standalone.

Amplifying the confusion in this structural and narrative mess are weird time leaps, flashbacks, narration from multiple characters, ast life stuff, prophesying, exposition, glimpses at an apocalyptic future Earth, weird symbols occasionally being flashed on the screen and plot elements involving hypnosis, possession, mind control via some shells filled with green goo, restored youth and a giant skeleton demon with multiple heads. Seeing how I'm all about the girls-kick-ass subgenre and usually even enjoy the really cheap and terrible ones on some level, for a film like this to make me zone out, and do so in just 30 minutes' time, takes some real fuckery.

Completely forgotten these days, and understandably so, this one-and-done OVA from Bandai didn't lead to much else. It appears to have been based on a comic of the same name released by Kasakura Publishing in 1987 (which appears to itself had a sequel) and was given a Japanese VHS release from C. Moon Video in 1989 as well as a laserdisc release from Bandai / Emotion the same year, though I could find no other releases for this title elsewhere.

★1/2

Shen jian dong shan he (1981)

... aka: 神劍動山河

... aka: Excalibur Moves Mountains and Rivers

... aka: Heaven Sword

... aka: Thrilling Bloody Sword

... aka: Thrilling Sword

Directed by:

Chang Shing-I (Hsin-Yi Chang)

You know what Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was missing? Laser fights, demonic creatures, blood, ghosts, living skeletons, fire-breathing dragons with nine heads, talking chickens encouraging mob violence, fart humor, decapitations, bisection, swords going up asses and weird biblical allusions. Thankfully, this warped Taiwanese children's fantasy is around to remedy those oversights.

At a royal palace, Queen I-mei (Fanny Fong Fang-Fang), is in the middle of delivering her first child when a flaming meteor flies down from the heavens, hits her in the stomach and forces her to push out a giant, bloody, pulsating cocoon, instantly killing her! The king, Gau-shien (Han Chin), then orders his men to put the infant in a basket and send it down river a la Baby Moses. The basket floats through the Happy Forest and right to the village of the seven dwarfs. They initially plot to eat the "flesh ball" but after stabbing it, it spits out smoke and opens to reveal a (human) baby girl. Thinking she has been sent from the heavens, they name her Yaur-gi. Seventeen years later, Yaur-gi (also Fanny Fong) has grown into a beautiful young woman. After almost falling off a cliff trying to grab a flower, she's rescued by handsome Prince Yur-juhn (Shang-Chien Liu) and it's love at first sight.

Meanwhile, a duck-lipped cyclops monster is going around slaughtering people, so the king calls for reinforcements. Female exorcist Gi-err (Elsa Yang) shows up and demonstrates her formidable powers by making an imperial minister's head do 360 degree spins and levitating a sword and impaling a warrior with it. She calls forth her friend, black magician Shiah-ker (Yi Chang), and the two are easily able to defeat the monster. Against the wishes of chief advisor Minister Gan (Shih Chin), the king then promotes the two exorcists to head up his security detail. What he doesn't realize is that his new friends actually sent the monster there to begin with just so they could kill it and then infiltrate the kingdom. The two are working in cahoots with a master demon called Ah-Du and their ultimate goal is to take over the king's empire.

Back at the dwarf village, the love-struck Yaur-gi becomes depressed because the prince, who's been busy slaying a nine-headed sea monster the evil infiltrators have conjured up, hasn't returned to see her. She saves a white bunny with an injured leg, which then transforms into a giggly white "fairy of the forest" (Ling-Ling Hsia) who then offers to grant her any wish she wants. Any guesses as to what she wishes for? In order to get close to the prince, Yaur-gi poses as a maid but her cover is quickly blown since she's a dead-ringer for her mother - the late queen - and is wearing a necklace left in the basket with her when she was sent upstream. She does manage to briefly talk with the prince, who agrees to come see her. Unfortunately, he comes in the form of a man-in-a-suit bear after the evil sorcerers cast a spell on him.

With help from the little fairy, Yaur-gi and her dwarf dads concoct a magical potion in a giant barrel and place the bear prince inside. The kicker is that he has to stay submerged for an entire week for it to work. But since this movie just loves to make stuff up as it goes along, the barrel is opened early when Shiah-ker shows up to kill him and the fairy then whips up an "elixir" to save him. Shiah-ker kidnaps the princess and takes her to hell, where she's possessed by a demon and then agrees to marry him instead of the prince. The only way to put a stop to the madness is by retrieving "the thunder sword," which is said to be hidden in an underwater cave, and a few other essentials needed to defeat the bad guys, which also requires beating a vast array of monsters.

Monsters, you say? Yes, this has them... and tons of them I might add. Aside from the aforementioned cyclops, multi-headed "siren" and demon master, there's a man in a pterodactyl suit, frog monsters played by men covered in black spandex with flippers on their hands and feet hopping around on their butts, four near-indestructible bronze muscleman statues come to life, each with a unique weapon and just one vulnerable point on their bodies (including up the ass!), a bloody corpse that can detach its arms and feet, a set of large flying dentures (!) and a giant genie with heavy eye makeup and a plastic butt (!) on its head.

Aside from all of the fx work (which is technically awful if we're to be honest with ourselves yet still fun) and the fact this is all just too weird to outright ignore, Sword also benefits a lot from nice bold colors and surprisingly good production design, sets, props, weaponry and costumes. But then we have the rest of the movie to contend with...

The story takes forever to really take shape and lurches along for the first hour or so until it finally settles into a hero's quest type of scenario. Some of the main characters are also extremely annoying, starting with the princess, who's a complete nitwit. She's always moping around, just stands there and refuses to ever help anybody, casually knocks over a protective statue that she's been told to stay away from countless times and has to be told repeatedly not to open the lid to the healing bath for the prince or else it will KILL him. I'm not sure why everyone's jumping at the bit to try to marry this chick. She'll probably end up getting whoever does killed! Hopefully no one ever gives her access to nuclear codes or allows her near a button that says "Only hit in case of emergency" in the future or we're all in trouble.

Even worse are the dwarfs. They're loud, klutzy, dumb and obnoxious, spit food into each other's mouths, fart in the talking chicken's face ("It smells bad!") and constantly smack, kick, push and punch each other accompanied by goofy Three Stooges-style sound effects. I doubt even small children would find their antics amusing. The music is all stolen from other sources. I noticed The Burning and Battlestar Galactica but there's other familiar music here that I've heard before but can't quite place.

Up until recently all that existed for this one was a cloudy full screen VHS print. That is until a 35mm print was finally located. It's been given a 2K restoration from its original camera negative for its Blu-ray release from Gold Ninja Video. There are lots of scratches and damage on this print, not necessarily a bad thing in my eyes (or perhaps yours either), but a lot of the visual effects that were added in post cause the background detail to blur. There's talk of a full restoration coming soon.

★★1/2